Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t know what to say. It seems we’ve nowhere left to go, we’re out of options, so we’ll step forward and admit it – Bitterwallet are terrorists. Fact.

You see, Andy’s a grumpy twat who can’t abide his neighbours and so prefers not to talk to them. Mof shuts the curtains in the living room when he’s watching The Old Grey Whistle Test on the widescreen tv, and I like to pay for stuff down the shops with cash rather than a debit card because I’m up past my eyes in debt. See? Bang to rights. Based on this evidence, you should contact the authorities immediately and tell them we’re planning to kill someone.

The thing is, we’re not even taking the piss. This is a recorded promo taken from talkSPORT, the national radio station for white van drivers:

We’ll be honest, we haven’t listened to talkSPORT ourselves to verify the ad for fear of self-harming as a consequence, but we’ve confirmed similar messages have been broadcast on other London-based radio stations. (Nor are we advocating the views of the website that posted the YouTube video, since it talks of shadow organisations and “the world moving towards global centralised governance” – it all sounds a step away from Icke)

Concern about suspicious activity is one thing; insisting everyone play citizen spy and report neighbours who enjoy their privacy is quite another. Remember London’s Orwellian surveillance posters? Even a the crime of being a photographer in a street is a step too far. Going out in public appears to pose a security risk, but if you stay at home and don’t give up your right to privacy, you’re a terrorist!

It’s still a little ambiguous, however; are they suggesting terrorists can go undetected by making small talk, opening their curtains and applying for a credit card? Let’s hope they never work that out. And thank the lord companies don’t give away credit cards like lollypops, eh?

There’s more helpful information for spotting a terrorist on the Metropolitan Police website:

Terrorists need to travel – Meetings, training and planning can take place anywhere. Do you know someone who travels but is vague about where they’re going?

Yes. Men who are having yankee doodle in the Premier Inn at Grantham with somebody other than their wife.

Terrorists need communication – Anonymous, pay-as-you-go and stolen mobiles are typical. Have you seen someone with large quantities of mobiles? Has it made you suspicious?

Yes. Mobile phone salesmen have large quantities of mobiles. And men who are having yankee doodle with somebody other than their wife usually have more than one phone.

Terrorists use computers…

It’s you! You’re using a computer, you’re a terrorist! Christ almighty, where’s my phone? What’s that number I have to call, the one on the Metropolitan Police website? Now I’m using a computer – I’m a terrorist too! Fuck!

The people behind Facebook have had enough applications that allow users to see who has been viewing their profile. They’re so irritated by it that they’re not just getting rid of them, but they’re “aggressively disabling” them.

Is it me, or does threatening to ‘aggressively disabling’ sound a bit dodgy? Just me? Several variants of these “stalker apps” have appeared on Facebook in recent days seeing unwitting/witless users helping to spread rogue software by attempting to install it.

Among the applications that have now been given the heave-ho are “Stalker Check”, and “Who has visited my profile”. Quite why you’d want to see who has been visiting your profile is a bit of a mystery… but then again, why anyone would want to constantly bombard everyone else with stuff about shitty virtual farms and pretend Mafia turf wars is another complete baffler (and source of immense irritation).

In a statement, Facebook said: “Don’t believe any applications that claim they can show you who’s viewing your profile or photo. They can’t.”

Naturally, these apps have been created to make money for the designers by forcing would-be users to view advertising. That said, there’s the chance that those who sign up could be redirected to sites containing viruses and malicious software.

Maybe Facebook should look into a system similar to Apple’s App Store where everything that goes through the site should be vetted first. However, that seems unlikely.

Speaking to the BBC last March, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg said: “There will occasionally be some applications that people don’t like. Our philosophy is that having an open system anyone can participate in is generally better.”

[Newsbeat]

Remember that story about the Liberal Democrats being dribbling dipshits concerning the Digital Economy Bill? (it’s here, if you don’t). If you can’t be bothered clicking the link, basically, the kicker is this: they proposed an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would allow for national web-censorship.

It prompted one Bitterwallet reader to howl: “The Lords are a bunch of pompous old wankers and that’s being kind to them.” Well, get ready to have your gears really ground down to iron filings.

A document has been leaked from the British Phonographic Institute which seems to suggest the amendment was basically written by the record industry lobby and entered into law on their behalf by representatives of the “party of liberty.”

Essentially, the recording industry told the LibDems what to put in and they gleefully played ball. They must be getting paid in boxsets or something. It’s obvious that parliamentarians don’t see that copyright laws are wildly out-of-date (can’t transfer a CD onto my computer? Piss off!) and that it’s not solely about ‘inter-business regulation and deals’. If they get this wrong then it could shaft our freedom of speech.

So quite why the LibDems thought it would be okay to go to one side of the fence concerning the amendment without talking to the rest of us first is beyond me.

[BoingBoing]

95% of Britain is now on Google’s Street View. Y’know? That’s the thing where you can zoom right in on your house and coo “Oooh! I left the window open when they passed little important me!”

Google Maps is, of course, a very useful tool (to be perfectly honest, I don’t know how I managed to find anywhere at all without it) yet, there are privacy issues. Some rags have talked about how it could be rather useful to burglars… but in fairness, the fact that you’re at work most of the time, they could probably walk around your property and scope it out in a much more effective way.

Yeah. Someone’s probably doing that right now whilst you scratch your arse with a biro at work.

So, now that Britain is pretty much covered completely, have a rummage around and see if you can catch any blokes sneaking out of lapdancing clubs, nudey sunbathers or someone cottaging in a park. Get cracking too because Google announced that it might have to cancel the Google Street View service in the EU due to unmanageable requests of the European Commission.

The Register have a got some mash-up map thing that shows where the GoogleMobiles have been which you can see here.

The question mark in the headline not only asks a genuine question but, with any luck, acts as a safeguard against any potential lawsuits because, as I sit here in my undercrackers eating Angel Delight dry from the sachet and borrowing an article from another website, I’ve got no idea.

Pointless disclaimer out of the way, consumer watchdog Which? is all pleased at the news that the solicitors’ watchdog – Solicitors Regulation Authority – will pursue its complaint about a London law firm, Davenport Lyons, which accused hundreds of people of illegal file sharing despite the fact they’d done nothing wrong.

The SRA have agreed with the Which? accusation that Davenport Lyons of being ‘bullying’ and ‘excessive’ and that there are grounds to call them to account.

It’s going to a disciplinary tribunal.

Deborah Prince, Head of Legal Affairs, Which?, said: “We’re pleased to see some action at last from the SRA and hope the tide is finally turning in favour of consumers. We now want to see some decisive action to stop these bully-boy tactics. We hope the SRA’s decision sends a message to law firms like ACS and TBI that they can’t make a quick buck by accusing people of copyright infringements they haven’t committed.”

Apparently, Which? continually hears from people angered by letters they’ve received that wrongly accuse them of illegal file sharing and demanding payment for their ‘crime’. It has produced advice for such people on its website, which you can find here.

Have any of you lot had any bother with letters such as this? Feel free to rant in the comments.

[DOF]

While we consider the majority of our readership to be a pack of bastards, we have a special place in our heart for you. You are an avid Bitterwallet reader, and we hold you in high regards because of your sharp mind, your keen sense of curiosity and your willingness to entertain whatever drivel we push your way.

Andy of Yarm is one better than an avid reader of Bitterwallet – he’s a rabid reader, one of the old guard who has consumed our organ from the beginning. And unknown to us, Andy has been conducting a lurid scientific experiment concerning personal privacy and spam email:

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been dropping in smartarse comments on the BW website, mainly along the lines ‘never post your email details on the web’ following by my email address andyofyarm@gmail.com.

A quick check to Google under the keyword ‘andyofyarm’ shows a healthy page of links generated, mostly Bitterwallet but also bizarrely this page.

Given that avid BW readers are a pack of twats I expected my inbox to be deluged with Viagra spam or various threats etc. So tonight, with trepidation, I opened the Gmail inbox. Prepare to be shocked by the wall of filth and abuse:

No detail from Andy on whether the Spam box was full, but interesting that his details were yet to be scraped and abused. That said, it’s fair to say that after this post he can probably expect email from Donkey Capers and Wet Girls in the Raw.

There’s a new social media network out there for the kids. It’s called a serious breach of data protection laws. Not a sexy name, but here’s how it works – just submit your email address to a company, and wait for some ten-thumbed prick to cut and paste your address into the CC box of an email, along with hundreds of others. Boom! Dozens of strangers have your personal details and the company in question drives a tank through the Data Protection Act.

It worked for customers of Orange, and now Spotify have done much the same thing. Avid Bitterwallet reader Jack has been in touch about a joint promotion Spotify are running in conjunction with TalkTalk – entrants submit a favourite Spotify track and their email address, and winners receive a premium subscription to Spotify. Not that you have to win to receive a prize – yesterday, Jack was lucky enough to get a mailing list of over 240 email addresses, all CC’d into an email sent by Spotify. Obviously he was less than delighted to note his own address amongst those distributed to all recipients.

This isn’t just an inconvenience, or an irritation – it’s a breach of the law. And of course, Spotify took the matter very serious, and certainly didn’t just knock out a trite email to anybody who complained in the vain hope they didn’t take the matter further:

Hi There,

Spotify would like to apologise for the previous email you received today regarding the current TalkTalk competition. Spotify inadvertently copied all users who requested information on the promotion into the same field, which exposed your email address to others.

Privacy is of the utmost importance to Spotify and we’ll be reviewing our processes to ensure this type of error will not happen again.

Yours sincerely,

The Spotify team

Plenty of those who received the email are now co-ordinating plans to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about the breach. Some just want a free Spotify subscription for their trouble. Of course mistakes happen, but when they’re mistakes that break the law, there needs to be some gesture by the guilty party beyond a piss-poor excuse. Over to you, Spotify.

[Bors]

Insurance companies could use social networking as a way of squeezing higher premiums out of customers, according to some fresh jaw-fart from a man at Confused.com.

Darren Black, head of home insurance believes that, as using sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, allows strangers to tell when you are and aren’t at home, the risk of burglary will be increased, giving the insurers a golden opportunity to bleed a few more quid out of you.

He says: “Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering, even using Google Earth and Streetview to plan their burglaries with military precision. Insurance providers are starting to take this into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent.”

The warning comes in the wake of the Please Rob Me site which appeared this week, listing Foursquare users who aren’t at home and are therefore probably ripe for a good hard burgling.

Here at Bitterwallet, we’re in our windowless underground pod 24/7, so no one’s gonna get their paws on our crown jewels. Know this.

“You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high.”

This tweet made by Paul Chambers of some place called Balby has got him into a world of pain. That’s because he was tweeting about an airport and has subsequently been charged by the fuzz for sending a menacing message.

If there’s a law against that, I’m fucked.

Chambers is to appear at Doncaster Magistrates’ Court on Friday for a preliminary hearing after he was charged by South Yorkshire police on Thursday.

Chambers is said to have made the remarks about Robin Hood airport in South Yorkshire after he found out the a flight he planned to take was cancelled after all that snowy stuff fell out of the clouds last month.

As a result of the comments, some idiot complained to police who then, bafflingly, went and arrested Chambers and seized computers and an iPhone as part of their investigation. To rub dogshit in the wound, Chambers also found that he’d been banned for life from Robin Hood airport by authorities. It’s reckoned that this poor sod is the first person to be charged over sending offensive messages over the social networking site.

Has no-one thought that the likelihood of someone orchestrating a terrorist attack probably wouldn’t bother doing it on a social networking site? I mean, imagine a Facebook status update saying “I’m going to plant a device in my bag and set it off at Gatwick next Thursday”, followed with a thumbs up and Andy Dawson Likes This.

It wouldn’t happen because you’d have to be a monumental idiot to do so and an staggering kill-joy would be the only one to take it seriously.

Next week: Bitterwallet closed by authorities for comments above regarding Gatwick airport despite the fact that they clearly form part of a rubbish article designed, and failing to, make people even slightly amused or interested.

[The Register]

British Airways are on “a cyberspace witch-hunt” according to some (not us… why would we say such a thing?) after they suspended 15 cabin crew members. What for? Well, BA said it had acted over “inappropriate postings” made on the website of union Unite, adding it would not tolerate “intimidation of staff”.

But wait! Unite are saying that this isn’t the case at all! While Unite are balloting 13,000 BA staff on strike action, they reckon that these (alleged) comments were made on Facebook and not on their website.

British Airways are saying that they came across a chatroom on the Unite union’s website and deemed the language in some of the comments to amount to intimidation. Is this a case of people getting their personal privacy compromised? How about that for easing the relations between the two in crunch talks – talks that have reportedly become an increasingly bitter and fraught scrap.

You see, it’s all because BA want to make rather large changes in the terms and conditions of its staff. For starters, they want three quarters of its crew to accept pay rises of 2-7% followed by a pay freeze but at the same time, wants 3,000 staff to switch to part-time working, along with a reduction in onboard crewing levels to 14 from 15 on long-haul flights from London’s Heathrow airport.

These all seem like pissy little things from the outside looking in… but y’know, I’m sure it’s all rather justified. Either way, it’s all kicking off and shit is being slung from both sides. It might be worth booking flights with absolutely any other company until they get all this sorted out.

The verdict is due on February 22 and if industrial action does go ahead it will be on March 1.

[Beeb]

Data protection – it’s hard work, isn’t it? Having to find somewhere safe to keep all that customer information, and then making sure nobody inadvertently emails it back to the customers. For example, if you’ve contacted Orange through their website recently, you may have received a short email from the service provider, because Orange are wanting customer feedback to improve the experience:

Hello from Orange

Thank you for your recent email enquiry. In order to improve our service we would like to take the opportunity to ask you a couple of questions regarding the way in which you have contacted Orange.

In the pursuit of improving service provided to our customers, Orange are intending to update and modify the ‘Contact Us’ section of the Orange website that our customers use to email their queries to our Customer Service Representatives.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could reply to this email with your thoughts on the ‘Contact Us’ section by answering the following questions.

How easy was the ‘Contact Us’ section of the Orange website to navigate?

Was your query included in the options available?

Did you find it easy to locate the ‘Contact Us’ section?

Do you have any suggestions or comments on how we can improve this service?

Your feedback is important to us and will be passed on to our Development Teams, so thank you for taking the time to reply.

Kind regards

Orange Online Services Team

Avid Bitterwallet reader Mark knew he wasn’t alone in receiving the email – partly because it wasn’t personalised and the contents were generic, but mostly because the address field contained over one thousand email addresses aside from his:

Those on the list are already emailing one another wondering why Orange has sent their email details to a big ol’ bunch of strangers. And despite the data protection gaffe, users are yet to receive an apology from the company. At least you’ve all made some new friends for Google Buzz, eh?

In recent months, Talk Talk have been vocal opponents to the government’s proposed Digital Britain Bill and its plans to introduce a ‘three strikes’ attack against repeat illegal downloaders.

They became so enraged that a competition was launched, with the remit of finding the best artistic attack against the government and in particular Lord Mandelson, the mandroid behind the ridiculous new law-to-be.

Sadly, the winner was a song (below), ‘Only Idiots Assume’ by comedians Liam Mullone and Hils Barker, better known as The Broken Dongles. By any stretch of the imagination it is elbow-chewingly awful, the kind of thing that the Sex Pistols might have trod in while scarpering from one record company to another back in 1977. Imagine if Chumbawamba had never given up the day jobs – that’s how wretched it is. Listen for yourself…

They got three grand for that! Three grand! For a song that opens with the lines “I own the works of Nietzsche; you might assume that I’m a racist!” We’re not a gang of Stephen Sondheims here but it’s hardly “You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met you” now is it?

One of the judges, Stephen Fry (proving that he definitely doesn’t know everything,) says: ‘I am insanely in love with Only Idiots Assume. It’s got the anger, the wit, the musical skill – all in a wonderful package that reminds me of the high days of my youth when punk roamed the land and the young were angry and funny and spunky and spiky.’

Co-writer Mullone said the song was “a ska-punk reply to Peter Mandelson.” Hmm, we’ve put some actual ska below for you to use as a reference point against the aimless, tuneless dirge above. Jesus, the ‘winning’ song has got us so wound up that we almost want the Digital Britain Bill to be passed as law NOW, unopposed and with a ‘one strike’ clause welded on to it.

Could they not have just hurled some green custard at Mandelson instead? Gah!

[Chortle]

Today marks the third annual international Data Privacy Day.

That’s astonishingly boring isn’t it? How do you celebrate it? Is it a dress down day? Would you even find out because the data required to tell you about it was kept private?

Anyway, this thing is an awareness raising initiative. Seeing as it’s focused on data privacy and protection, new statistics from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) show that the rate of data security breaches isn’t slowing at all.

Great.

The ICO have revealed in a statement that it has uncovered over 800 data security breaches since 2007, nearly 200 of which were the result of mistakes and 262 due to criminal theft.

The data watchdog has recently been awarded new powers… not the power of flight or anything interesting like that… rather, they are allowed to fine organisations up to £500,000 if they cock up.

The power has clearly gone to their heads as they’re warning that they’ll use these tougher sanctions if companies fail to report security breaches which subsequently come to light.

“In just over two months a further 100 organisations have reported data security breaches to us,” said deputy Information Commissioner David Smith.

“We are keen to work with organisations to prevent breaches occurring in the first place, and to help put things right when things do go wrong. Talking to us may, of course, result in regulatory action. However, organisations must act responsibly.”

He didn’t add: “We’ll come and fuck you a new arsehole. We can do it. We’re allowed. We’re hung like hoover bags as well.”

This Data Privacy Day is even more joyous than usual because it’s also the fourth annual European Data Protection Day. If I’d know in advance, I would have taken the day off work and got pissed.

European data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx, who is a monumentally exciting man, argues that: “The growing use of personal data affects us all, and the privacy consequences of this development are now becoming more visible. It is therefore essential that everyone’s fundamental rights to privacy and data protection are effectively protected in practice.”

PARTY!

[V3]

Yesterday we told you about avid Bitterwallet reader Bryan and the unexplained account he had with Betfair, despite having never used the site. In that particular instance, Betfair emailed Bryan to notify him about unspent winnings, then again to explain it was all a big misunderstanding and he should never have received an email in the first place. Data privacy issues ahoy!

The post prompted fellow Bitterwallet reader Martin (no less avid a reader than Bryan, it must be said) to contact the British Bankers’ Association and asked them to search for accounts open in his name. Martin provided his details including his full name and two middle names. He expected the answer at least reveal the accounts he operated with Barclays – a current account, a savings account and 2 ISAs. Instead, the BBA replied to Martin less than twelve hours later, and had found… none whatsoever:

Following extensive investigations carried out on your behalf, we regret to advise you that, Barclays have not found an account in the name of [NAME] plus any other names (maiden name etc) which you have quoted.

If you are dissatisfied with the way the bank has dealt with your claim you have the right to appeal through the bank’s internal complaints procedure (leaflets are available from the bank’s branches). If your appeal is unsuccessful you have the right to refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service, South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall London E14 9SR telephone 0845 080 1800 website www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

How thorough was the BBA search to completely miss four bank accounts registered under a specific (and quite possibly unique) name? We have since informed Martin of his lack of existence, and emptied the two ISA accounts with the personal details he passed on to us. It’s what he would have wanted.